No More Squeamish Soldiers
by sychopenguin5
Summary: The shining blade coming down in a graceful arc is beautiful; the resultant bloody mess much less so. Disturbingly poetic descriptions of blood, gore, and horrific deaths by various weapons. Based on FE9, but applies to other FE games as well.


_A/N: I know it says "Rated M," but what I really mean is "Rated GGG"—for Gruesome, Gut-wrenching Gore-fest. If you are squeamish, GO AWAY NOW. There will be excessive poetic descriptions of blood and guts and brains and all that good stuff.  
>Fire Emblem does not belong to me, though one or more of these weapons might… heh heh. =3<em>

The slash of a sword was sometimes beautiful. Gleaming metal, reflecting the sun's rays, coming down in a graceful arc.

But it was also horrific, to watch the spray of blood coming from a fresh wound, a man staggering with glazed eyes and a pained cry, even if it was only a cut too shallow to be fatal. When it was deadly, though, the waterfalls of blood painted the clothes and the ground with red. Intestines spilled out through slashes to the abdomen, muscles shredded under parted skin, and white bone gleamed through the bloody pools.

Lance wounds weren't quite as horrific. A single stab didn't yield as much blood, even when the hole went straight through the heart. A small puddle of blood and only a glimpse of organs inside. But the weapon itself showed more evidence of its owner's kills: like a sword, the blade could be cleaned and resharpened almost as good as new, but the wooden handle of the lance absorbed the blood of its victims and never washed clean, so the splotches of darker grain served as proof of how many enemies this weapon had killed.

Conversely, axes were _more_ horrific. The heavy weapon could easily crunch through bone, severing a limb or cleaving a man nearly in half. A wound that size could easily drain half the blood in a body, making the battlefield slippery more than any other wound could. Plus the organs falling out in the puddle and the axed bones sticking out at odd angles added to the gruesome picture. A good axe could even crack open a skull, and the brains inside were not a sight one could easily forget.

And speaking of brains, that was about the worst that an arrow wound could look. Any face shot—especially an eye—was the best instant kill afforded by a bow and arrow, but never a horrific injury to look at. Only the tiniest drops of blood leaking out around the shaft; even when the hit wasn't a kill and the weapon was pulled out and discarded, the wound hardly afforded notice when compared to the gruesomeness of other weapons' damage.

Knives were a lot like swords, just cut less deep. Plenty of blood to fill your nostrils, but not much else. Sure, a smooth line cut through a surprised-looking corpse's throat was sometimes a shock to look at… But the true horrors that a knife was capable of required the time and security to torture a victim, which a full-force battle didn't allow. It was either a quick kill or a tiny scratch, and then move on.

Light magic was even less of a concern. Mainly it could only hamper an enemy, never really kill them completely. The light would blind an opponent so badly that it burned his retinas, so any other method could be used to dispatch him fully. It was the gentlest weapon, and that's why it was wielded by healers.

Then again, magic could be pretty bad, too. The smell of burning flesh was always worse than any blood or guts, and the charred skin peeling off as the enemy continues moving despite being slightly injured is never pretty. Even worse, though, is when the Fire spell is successful enough to set the man's clothes on fire, and as the blaze spreads all over his body, he abandons all sanity and runs screaming and burning around the battlefield until finally collapsing in a smoldering heap of unrecognizable charred flesh.

Thunder tomes aren't quite as bad, because at least the charred bodies of its victims don't have the opportunity to run around screaming; they're just already dead. Paralyzed in twisted, electrified poses and still pretty unrecognizable—almost like a premature rigor mortis—but at least they could only scream for a second while the spell hit.

But the worst of all weapons was Wind tomes. The spell called for four gusts of air to converge on the target from different directions, creating a tremendous amount of pressure in the center. When the enemy had preexisting injuries, that pressure was relieved by spurting blood out every open wound. The tiniest of scrapes gushed blood like a major artery. Sometimes, if the spell was fast-working, the blood exiting the body came out in geysers, making the screaming soldier look like some sort of twisted, evil fountain. But if the enemy had no open wounds? Don't think it wouldn't work, because that was even worse. The wind spell would have to be stronger, with more force generated. Then, with no easier way to relieve pressure, it ended up having to be released through the body's orifices. Most notably, the eyes: they would pop out of the skull with a sickening sound, leaking blood in their wake. Mini-explosions also happened at the ears and nose, and blood followed out, but the eyeballs were in the way of the escaping pressure in the eye sockets. Watching _THAT_ was something that no one could ever forget.

And that is why Soren often finds himself solo-ing half the battlefield, with everyone else faaaaar away from him, his Wind tome, and his hapless imploded victims.

_So yeah, that's my random drabble about FE weapons and mind-scarring gore._

_Does this mean I should seek psychiatric help? ;3_

_So I think it was inspired by my musings about Wind magic. I mean, it had long annoyed me that what was called "Thunder" actually utilized lightning to attack, but I'd gotten over that. Then one day, I was wondering "how in the world does WIND actually kill people? Of course, Soren is just that cool that he can MAKE it deadly, but seriously, how?" And so my first theory was, as expected if you know me, a humorous crack-theory: I said that maybe the wind just blows off all the enemy's clothes and he gets so embarrassed that he runs away and abandons the battle! ...But, I actually did want to answer my original question. So then I thought about physics, and came up with that possible explanation. Besides how it makes actual sense, I also like how it explains why Soren finishes off the soldiers that are already wounded by somebody like Ike, as he has to in the beginning when he's low-level. (My third theory was that the wind rushes into the enemy's lungs and explodes him, but I thought that made slightly less sense and also didn't explain double-teaming.)_

_And then the next day, it occurred to me that that was probably the most gruesome way to die on a FE9 battlefield, so I started comparing weapons in my head to see which was most horrific...and then I wrote it down._

_Yeah, I know I left out the laguz claws, beaks, and breath, but I decided to limit it to a comparison of beorc weapons. Being cut to ribbons still isn't quite as bad as being imploded by Wind. (Although, I suppose Naesala's Vortex still counts...)_


End file.
